Saturday, February 15th, 2025

SZA ft. Kendrick Lamar – 30 for 30

Throw some [5.56]s on that…

SZA ft. Kendrick Lamar - 30 for 30
[Video]
[5.56]

Julian Axelrod: It’s borderline blasphemous to use the sample and opening from Rich Boy’s “Throw Some D’s” (one of the best songs of all time) but SZA and Kendrick come pretty close to clearing that impossibly high bar. If anything, the beat’s nostalgic warmth unlocks a looseness between them that’s missing from their other collaborations, which often sag under the weight of their own importance. “Doves in the Wind” may be a better song, but it doesn’t have Kendrick singing, “fooooosball.”
[7]

Claire Davidson: What’s the point of “30 for 30”? I’d hazard a guess that it’s meant to frame SZA and Kendrick Lamar as each other’s jaded ex-lovers, but the verses are so generalized that constructing any kind of narrative seems futile. That then poses the question of why this song even needed to be a duet, given how their storied history as collaborators feels so inessential to the final product, to say nothing of the gauzy beat that saps both performers of any energy. Also, the lyric “say you on your cycle, but he on his period too” certainly wouldn’t be the first time Lamar has conflated supposedly female anatomy with weakness—I’m reminded of the “other vaginal option” punchline that appears on “Not Like Us”—but it’s even more egregious in a song credited to SZA, who is currently one of the most prolific women in the music industry. I’m tempted to say I’m docking a point for that line alone, but that would imply I had strong feelings toward the song in the first place.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: “You go to the beauty shop and get in that chair/Your man in there gettin’ his hair fixed,” quipped Millie Jackson in her 1977 song “All the Way Lover.” “He cuter than you, huh?” Kendrick has similar men in mind on this SZA song: “They cuter than you, oh?/Say you on your cycle but he on his period too, huh?” Whatever, Kenny; it’s telling that even when he’s being obnoxious, he exerts a far greater presence on this rote R&B traditionalism than the lead artist does. Allegedly she’s present, but on the “30 for 30” roll call she tellingly recedes before 2020s Kendrick, Switch’s 1979 recording of “I Call Your Name,” and even the ghost of 2007 Rich Boy.
[4]

Dave Moore: Kendrick Lamar and SZA work well together. He needs a light counterbalance that isn’t directly competing with his voice, which is authoritative in one sense but at a sonic level is a little too mellow and conversational to compete with another big voice on the track. (He worked as a feature on Beyoncé’s “Freedom” because the song cleanly cordons off his verse.) Here, though, I think the choice to let both Kendrick and SZA go modal together keeps them both in a fog and the song never finds a foothold, but not in an interesting way (they have too much personality to make the fog itself interesting). 
[5]

Mark Sinker: They stick with the cryptic, with this roman-à-clef shit that amuses them as much as it baffles everyone else, and I suppose to be fair cryptic is sometimes my high mode as well and I’m fine with it (baffled but fine). Their voices tag-team very nicely. 
[8]

Alfred Soto: The mewl of the electric piano augurs dull shit. The professional anonymity of the principals does not disappoint.
[4]

Katherine St. Asaph: Kendrick won the Drake beef so hard that now he even sounds like Drake. SZA’s charm has to be around here somewhere, right?
[3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Yet another indignity in Drake’s century of humiliation — Kendrick has seen fit not just to celebrate his victory in this beef on the biggest stages in music but to steal Drake’s one remaining niche, delivering a lover-man guest verse full of questionable sexual politics and corny jokes. Worse yet: he’s actually good at it, playing the moderator to SZA’s Twitch streamer (Doja Cat must be pissed) with a charm that his nemesis hasn’t displayed in a half decade or more. 
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: I don’t know what happened to make Kendrick tap into his latent Ne-Yo/The-Dream, but we do need one, and if they’re going around being assholes, let’s have Kendrick replace them too. szaonthedot when?
[8]

Saturday, February 15th, 2025

Kendrick Lamar ft. SZA – luther

From the Super Bowl to the sidebar…

Kendrick Lamar ft. SZA - luther
[Video]
[7.10]

Claire Davidson: I understand what Kendrick Lamar is trying to achieve with his delivery here: after all, “luther” is a very low-key love song, its predominant theme being lovers who provide care and respite for each other in the face of outside chaos. Yet there’s a difference between sounding relaxed and just seeming disengaged, and Lamar unfortunately leans toward the latter, his voice too subdued to be truly expressive. Compare this to SZA, whose trademark as a singer is her ethereal openness, and she ends up overshadowing Lamar on his own track. That being said, “luther” is still very endearing, conveying that spirit of breezy generosity with rich strings, fluttery keyboards, and sweet harmonies between the two vocalists, who still have chemistry in spite of their different approaches. 
[7]

Al Varela: One of Kendrick’s most underrated aspects as a rapper is his ability to make pop music without compromising the core of his music. He’s a legit romantic and his gentle, husky singing voice is a joy to listen to even when he’s not spitting or writing elaborate bars. His back and forth with SZA on “luther”, paired with the elegant sweeping production and gorgeous Luther Vandross sample is the best work these two have ever made together. Their charisma is so natural, and it never feels like one is overpowering the other. It’s a mutual love where both partners are perfectly in sync. 
[9]

Alfred Soto: I’m here for Kendrick ‘n’ SZA’s Marvin ‘n’ Tammi routine, and the shrewd interpolation of Luther Vandross’ “If This World Were Mine” reinforces the rapper’s king-of-the-world status without ironizing it; but this is the  kind of valentine to a sex worker that a Pulitzer Prize winner should’ve sneezed past.
[5]

Mark Sinker: Docked a point for how he sings “fah fah fah”, which bugs me for no reasons I can name. And a second for supplying this pleasing summery buzz and hum when it’s still months away from summer. And a third because doesn’t Luther sampled crack little doors in the desired surface of the purr? He’s Luther, he’s a bigger deal than this song, he’s somewhere you’d maybe rather be?
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: Vandross is the sample, but Kendrick has spoken enough on the evils of Lucy that I wonder if he has more nefarious ends in mind with this Luther. If so, he should make more of it. He declines to kumbaya, so that’s something: “She’s a fan, he’s a flop.” SZA and Kendrick do make a pretty pair, draping the arrangement in artful melody, but the appeal of GNX is its denuded intensity; the album isn’t worse for a slow jam, but it didn’t need one. This occupies the spot “Poetic Justice” held on Good Kid, m.A.A.d City, except it’s kinda dull. 
[5]

Katherine St. Asaph: A sweet little interlude, in the sense that an interlude is defined by what’s around it.
[5]

Taylor Alatorre: I wish this were sequenced at the end of GNX so it could more perfectly evoke the narrative of the triumphant Odysseus, returning to Ithaca and slaughtering the suitors in order to restore that most cherished ideal of domestic quietude. Some rappers nakedly grasp for such classical models of heroism, but Kendrick and SZA assume the mantle naturally, without the need for any ham-handed lyrical allusions on their part; some tropes are so powerful they just can’t help but reoccur.
[9]

TA Inskeep: Lamar’s verse just sits there, SZA provides some tender crooning relief (even singing lines like “fuckin’ on the low”), but what makes this is the very very smart use of the 1982 Cheryl Lynn/Luther Vandross Quiet Storm classic cover of  “If This World Were Mine.” (And a few 808 beats, which never hurt.) I wouldn’t say “luther” is a great song, but it’s an effective one.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: So happy that Kendrick finally replaced Drake as the soft rapper du jour. I mean, if he could actually sing that whole unpleasantness of last year need not have happened. szaonthedot soon come.
[10]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I was originally not planning to blurb this — it’s another tasteful, artfully wrought collaborations between two artists that we’ve already spilled untold pixels about our love for. But last night I dreamt of a stadium full of people, all singing along to this. I file this review not as a critic but as an oracle.
[8]

Saturday, February 15th, 2025

Babymonster – Really Like You

And Tom Hanks is nowhere to be seen…

Babymonster - Really Like You
[Video]
[5.71]

Iain Mew: It’s difficult to imagine Blackpink doing this song, which gives Babymonster more of their own identity than initial singles. The biggest difference is in piling on the sweetness, in both vocals and horns, which is no bad thing in itself but is too constricted by how big everything still sounds, ending up stilted more than breezy. It briefly works at the end when they loosen up most and convey a new sense of fun. 
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: Babymonster’s breakout hit was “Sheesh,” a glinting and hard-edged rap sortie that, for all its futuristic thrust wasn’t particularly fun. “Really Like You” is easygoing and easier to like, built on a throwback R&B arrangement that could be called boom-bap if only it had bumped a bit harder. (It should have; Ruka and Asa’s raps point in the right direction.) The hook is frothy and simpers too much, but it’s easy to press repeat on. If these monsters are in it for the long run, I hope they lean in this direction.
[6]

Claire Davidson: Color me surprised that what I’d otherwise assumed would be just another sugary love song is primarily imitating 90s hip-hop—and doing it pretty well, to boot, with slick but gentle guitarwork, a loose bass groove, and even a smattering of trumpets on the hook. To the group’s credit, Babymonster actually does feature some members who can comfortably rap over this instrumentation, but this is ultimately still lighthearted and girlish, not quite in step with the more celebratory feel the remainder of the track suggests. Said another way, the lyrics of “Really Like You” aren’t reminiscent of any particular MCs so much as Carly Rae Jepsen, and with all due respect to the Canadian queen of pop, there’s only so much good production can do to compensate for that gulf.
[6]

Melody Esme: Those horns are great. Overwhelmingly sweet and a little uncanny — that is what falling in love sounds like! They nailed it! And it’s a good thing they did, because “you make a bad day better/you make a good day better too” isn’t gonna propel this into the crush song canon. (“Ding-diggy-ding like a liggy-ding-ding/Wanna bing-bing,” on the other hand…) I don’t know if this will stay in my rotation. It’s a bit light, and there’s not a ton going for it. But sometimes nailing a single element is enough.
[7]

Dave Moore: I’m quite taken with the hook in the chorus, reaching up to minor sixths on tiptoes, but the production feels simultaneously bland and busy, and the whole thing washes out. I think that chorus reminds me vaguely of the old Girl’s Day song “Expectation,” which is the first K-pop song that I remember getting totally transfixed by at a purely melodic level. The comparison highlights how little is going in the songcraft, the song trying to get by almost entirely on personality in the rap sections, and (to be fair) almost succeeding. 
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: Jonny Hockings doing this record is v funny but you won’t get why it’s funny unless you click this link. v funny but not haha funny. On a positive note, Ahyeon sounds great! Imagine being Ryan Bickley too. This is a step up! Not for AiRPLAY, though. He gets it.
[6]

Leah Isobel: “Really Like You” gets closer to justifying Babymonster as a group than their past songs, though the balance still feels a little off — the contrast between the production’s laid-back warmth and the raps delivered in harsh Blackpink style is jarring, and the juvenile tone works against the group’s engineered professionalism. There remains a void where a recognizable personality or perspective should be; there’s nothing to root for, no core, no soul. But the vague promise that, at some point, there will be one is a step up for this group.
[5]

Friday, February 14th, 2025

Lil Baby, Young Thug & Future – Dum Dumb & Dumber

Only one of us took the easy joke…

Lil Baby, Young Thug & Future - Dum Dumb & Dumber
[Video]
[5.14]

Taylor Alatorre: “Who Hard as Me,” the album title asks, and with this track Lil Baby offers an unexpectedly candid answer to his own rhetorical question. He may wish for the audience to view Future and the newly freed Thugger as his Atlanta forefathers rather than his active competitors, but he also has to know that side-by-side comparisons are inevitable. So to keep things on a level playing field, he has them all sharing the same setup and same twice-borrowed flow, like a scientist running a controlled experiment. The effect is a thin yet intermittently thrilling sort of cohesion — they’re talking past each other, but they’re reading from the same book, so it sounds like some meaningful Event is taking place. This illusion holds up for a surprisingly long time before stalling out toward the end, with each bit of anticipatory buildup coming off slightly more deflated than the last.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Juke Wong rescuing more overrated superproducers than Danja/Scott Storch/Scott Bridgeway.
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Trap in its post-imperial phase; Future & Thugger sound close enough to peak performance that you can trick yourself into thinking it’s still 2016, but the illusion shatters the second you confront anything that they’re saying. The two of them are not given to lyrical clunkers like other aging peers. Their decline is instead registered in a certain calcification — where the prospect of a new verse from either was once freighted with the possibility that you’d get a line like “I’ma ride in that pussy like a stroller” or “bend the curve in a Spur like a MARTA bus,” now they seem utterly locked into the narrowest portions of their lyrical palettes. Lil Baby continues to be inessential on his own music.
[4]

Melody Esme: Welcome back, Thugger! Thank you for keeping this mid track from being worthless. Future’s also here, saying nothing but saying it well. I didn’t hear Lil Baby, so he must be in the background or something. Also there seemed to be a minute and a half of silence before the song started. Weird. Whatever. Pocket full of grandparents.
[5]

Katherine St. Asaph: Dul, dull, and duller.
[4]

Julian Axelrod: If Lil Baby’s charmingly titled WHAM is the rap equivalent of a perfunctory Hollywood thriller dumped in the dead zone of early January, features from Young Thug post-incarceration and Future coming off his commercial peak are the rap equivalent of Love Hurts advertised as “starring Academy Award winner Ke Huy Quan and Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose.”
[6]

Mark Sinker: In the after-times we will remember the driving songs as a strange and maybe a beautiful lost luxury: select a chord and glide toward the horizon along it without turning the wheel, forever, krautrock-style, the words congealing into murmured glyphs none can now decode. Dust off the artefact for meaning and microstructure, you say: but just as there are no cars now, there are no archaeologists. 
[7]

Thursday, February 13th, 2025

Travis Scott – 4×4

No u…

Travis Scott - 4x4
[Video]
[5.33]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: It’s absolutely pointless to review Travis Scott’s music in 2025. He’s one of the surest musical victors of the ongoing decay of the critical infrastructure of tastemakers and journalists that once helped determine who’s hot and who is otherwise; he’s gone direct to consumer, topping the charts on pure strength of sales regardless of whether anyone’s really listening. “4×4” thus has no obligation to be anything good, or even new — he repurposes the opening synth fanfares of his biggest hit, does a good impression of the featured guest on his last album’s one memorable song, references another one of his fraudulent number ones. It’s less a song and more a casserole.
[8]

Taylor Alatorre: Travis continues his run as the safe-for-advertisers version of Kanye by sampling, instead of Italian football ultras, an HBCU marching band rendition of a Migos single. He is ostentatiously obeying the speed limit of the zeitgeist.
[5]

Katherine St. Asaph: I assume the conspicuously opulent, straining-for-expensive-sounding sound of the synth-string arrangement is supposed to evoke Maybach music, but what it actually evokes is a low-bitrate mp3 of an orchestral boss battle remix.  And Travis Scott’s vocal is so anonymous and slurry-like that this might as well be an instrumental. I find that amusing enough to give “4×4” a much higher score than it probably deserves.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: FNZ did not come from Australia for this bullshit. 
[0]

Melody Esme: A quite good Travis Scott song that, like most Travis Scott songs, makes me feel nothing. I think you may have to be more into downers to really get him, and I’m more of an amphetamine lady (an Addergal, if you will). I like the line about fucking the sun; it made me think of “I WANT TO GET FUCKIN HIGH/I WANT TO EAT THE SUN,” which is always nice.
[6]

Will Adams: Absent of a grippy hook, I’m mostly intrigued by the textures. The marching band sample is processed such that the brass sounds like sirens blaring. Travis’s smeared vocal becomes more robotic via a chorus filter. Then, at just the right moment, he flips into a clear vocal. It’s the rare jolt of energy in an otherwise decent lull of a song.
[6]

Thursday, February 13th, 2025

Lainey Wilson – 4x4xU

But not a single [4] 4 U…

Lainey Wilson - 4x4xU
[Video]
[5.29]

Tim de Reuse: Bizarrely sleek, full of studio-magic ornamentation and elegant, serpentine chord changes all seeking some great road-trip catharsis to emphasize — but there’s nothing at the core of this song, no clever lyrical turnabout, no melody beyond a five-note ascending scale, no third-verse twist in the plot. The refrain of “four by four by you” is moderately clever when written down, but it’s a lyrical dead-end. Half the elements in the mix sound like they’re from session musicians who showed up to the wrong session. The bongo player plunks along like they’ve never heard this song before.
[2]

Claire Davidson: Given Wilson’s huge voice and her professed penchant for bell bottoms, it doesn’t surprise me that the intro of “4x4xU” sounds like it could’ve been pulled from a ’70s soul cut, all spacey keyboards and lush string accents. I wish the song committed to that style completely, as it would certainly fit the lyrics’ disarming intimacy, so potent that it can overcome Wilson’s usually free-spirited instincts. The actual song, a standard country love ballad, is fine enough, even if the hook forgoes a distinctive melody in order to center Wilson’s voice. But then again, this is Lainey Wilson, whose full-throated delivery matches the song’s devoted tone perfectly, even if I wish there were more than faint wisps of guitar and organ supporting her.
[6]

Alfred Soto: With a couple of blerps on the electric piano we’re in 1976 and listening to Barbara Mandrell. The extreme stylization of Lainey Wilson’s rubberband snap of a twang is 2025, though: affect as effect. But she sells her crazy goin’ crazy anyway.
[7]

Katherine St. Asaph: Irritating Country Snowclone watch: “drive my crazy crazy.” This may be the distinguishing feature of country music this century — since the actual music increasingly distinguishes nothing — although the hacky Kalamazoo/Timbuktu rhyme suggests that songwriters Aaron Raitiere and Jon Decious would rather inhabit an earlier one. (Neither here nor there, but speaking of earlier centuries, they look like Jay and Silent Bob.) So does the sleepy, dated arrangement. 
[3]

Julian Axelrod: Good country songwriting is finding a new truck brand to flip into a romantic metaphor. Good pop songwriting is making that metaphor hit home for dummies like me who didn’t know what a 4×4 was until writing this blurb.
[7]

Melody Esme: “Hypnotized by the white lines” is a wild line to show up in a country love song, and it took me a second to realize what she meant. Then again, if this was about the powder, it might actually have wheels. The song is pleasant enough, and the title pun is neat, but its charm didn’t survive to the end of the first listen, and it was nowhere in sight when I played it again. I’ve never felt starved for great country songs by women, so I feel comfy saying this is average.
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: I really loved the lushness of the arrangement here, opening with sprite-like Rhodes pianos and closing by smoothing out the kicks. Throughout, the song bounces between its softly brushed-off electric guitar/bass/live drum building blocks (the bass is played by Tommy Scifres, who is allowed two bars to really get into it) and the glittery but thin synthesizers. It also vacillates between its well-polished late-1998 throwback and the weak, poorly amplified djembe acting as an anchor for the dub elements that briefly slip into view during the second verse. Wilson herself is a knockout, though the pieced-together songwriting by Aaron Raitiere and Jon Decious (songwriters of a flimsy novelty for Tyler Halverson and a gentle cheating lark for Ashley McBryde) is standard, formal and stilted. But the depth of Wilson’s voice shines through, strong and vibrant, whether she’s tearing into the chorus, coasting gently over the arrangement, or going into a sterling run. Jay Joyce, all is forgiven.
[7]

Thursday, February 13th, 2025

The Marías – No One Noticed

It’s evening on the East Coast, and here’s an evening sort of song…

The Marías - No One Noticed
[Video]
[6.11]

Julian Axelrod: The Marías are the kind of perfectly pleasant band that I look away from for five seconds and all of a sudden they’re showing up on Bad Bunny songs and the upper reaches of the Coachella lineup. This song is lovely and nearly impossible to engage with critically, like artisan water or a nice hand soap.
[7]

Alfred Soto: How about a nice spot of warm tea?
[5]

Claire Davidson: I’m tempted to give “No One Noticed” credit for having a “pretty” instrumental, but the combination of gentle guitars and gauzy synth pads is so basic that it hardly holds my attention beyond the first minute. What exasperates me about this song is María Zardoya’s delivery, a placid falsetto that feels totally removed from the deep loneliness her lyrics illustrate. I suspect that this is a consciously ironic choice, borne of the narrator’s knowledge that her fleeting hopes for a long-distance romance are likely in vain; note the lyric, “I’d kinda like it if you’d call me.” If anything, though, this approach only bothers me more—given how long the loneliness epidemic has been a hot-button issue, I think we can all relate to feeling neglected, so why not embrace the emotion?
[4]

Katherine St. Asaph: There are two reasons I love this. One is that Maria Zardoya’s voice sounds uncannily like Stina Nordenstam, as does the song (very “Everyone Else in the World” or “Winter Killing“). Two is that it puts me back on some bullshit, sends me through some mental channels that never fell into disrepair.
[9]

Ian Mathers: I genuinely can’t sort out yet whether I think the listlessness here works for me. It feels suspended between hypnosis and monotony. Either of those could be positive, but I’m not sure it’s landing.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: The tiny fragments of verses that ripple outward from Jesse Perlman’s guitar line and Josh Conway and Gianluca Buccellati’s tranquil keyboards feel unfinished, timid. The chorus makes a naked, earnest dive, but when it ebbs away, it feels unsettled and languid, lulling the listener into a gentle sleep, troubled by the loneliness and despair in each word. As the refrain slowly trickles into the song, Zardoya’s voice becomes more insistent and direct. She pulls the listener back into the world, out of their troubled dreams and into the dawn, before gently whispering the chorus then disappearing entirely.
[10]

Tim de Reuse: We call it “dream-pop,” but it’s usually just pop with reverb, huh? What if we really leaned into it? “No One Noticed” sounds barely conscious: the instrumental is a mud of guitar-music leftovers somewhere at the bottom of the mix, and the vocalist sounds like she might just get tired of singing between words and step away. It’s a full, enthusiastic embrace of the kind of dull evening loneliness that leaves your skull feeling like it’s been stuffed with cotton. As a result of that unwavering commitment, it’s kind of dull itself. Good to have goals and follow through on them, I guess.
[6]

Mark Sinker: Uncanny Badalamenti valley, where uncanny means… kinda dull.
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Soft rock is one of those unkillable musical modalities. No matter what era or scene there will always be a need for it — lightly strummed guitars, pleasant melodies, an absence of any sonic features that would cause you to feel any particular way about it. I am, I suppose, glad that songs like “No One Noticed” exist, especially performed as competently as here. I just don’t know why I need to hear them.
[4]

Thursday, February 13th, 2025

Rose Gray – Party People

Party people live and party people blurb…

Rose Gray - Party People
[Video]
[6.00]

Julian Axelrod: Just when you think you’ve heard every song with a title like “Party People” and every artist with a name like “Rose Gray,” here comes a new song called “Party People” by an artist named Rose Gray. And guess what? “Party People” by Rose Gray is really good. The human spirit is indomitable.
[7]

Will Adams: Sega Bodega’s feather-soft trance production evokes less the heat of the club and more the comedown in the Uber ride home. Perhaps that’s the point, and why Rose Gray’s ode to party people feels not only sad but distant. “Party people always bring the best of us” is the most she can come up with? Gray is an observer, not a participant, admiring the free spirits and generous lovers of the dancefloor while being isolated from them. It’s a feeling I’ve come to embrace, as a longtime lover of dance music who feels more comfortable enjoying it while lying in bed than in a club. “Party People” offers encouragement that a leap of faith could open up that world to me.
[8]

Claire Davidson: I felt obligated to cover this song, if only to avenge Rose Gray for the fact that the first three articles cited on her Wikipedia page all have headlines that include some variant of “Who is Harris Dickinson’s girlfriend?” Sadly, “Party People” doesn’t have much in the way of a distinct identity, either. Its dime-a-dozen, omnipresent club beat is paired with synths that, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear were sampled from a Zedd or Calvin Harris track released in the mid-2010s. Hacks though both of those artists are, they at least understood that the best club bangers have an actual sense of dynamics, which this song totally lacks. An anesthetized Gray slurs her way through every young-love cliché in the book until arriving at a chorus that has no distinguishing features other than its repetition of the titular phrase ad nauseum. I doubt she has any real insight into how genuine “party people” behave, if this song is any indication of the energy she brings to an event, 
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Less a dancefloor-filler than the implication of one, but the metacommentary, winked at in the text itself, is charming enough that the lack of a grand hook comes off as thoughtful minimalism rather than laziness. It’s not my favorite song off of Louder, Please — that’d be “Free,” which soars where this slinks,but even a slight downturn from Rose Gray is still a joy to hear.
[8]

Mark Sinker: The energy dips every time her voice jumps up to high and breathy, but her mid range is very lovely.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Caroline Sans didn’t make comedy out of fonts for this bullshit.
[0]

Katherine St. Asaph: Ancient party person proverb: no one loves you more than an anonymous drunk girl in a bar. Now there is a song about that, which sounds like that.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Musically this is fine, but lyrically it’s reminding me of how quickly I click away from introvert/extrovert discourse. Guess I’m not a party person, or it wouldn’t bug me!
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: Roughly the rave music equivalent of one of the innumerable (okay, 22) AC/DC songs with the word “Rock” in the title, which at times can feel like the only honest form of music out there — “you are hearing me rock.” These songs serve a practical purpose as genre codifiers, but paradoxically, their down-the-middle messaging makes it even more vital to project an aura of sincerity, at least for those who want to do more than compose incidental music. Rose Gray anonymizes herself in the service of other people’s pleasure, but she does so with a smile, and her voice evinces a quiet assurance that her sacrifice will be rewarded in the next life, if not the next single push.
[7]

Isabel Cole: This song induces in me the same pleasant stupor of vicarious luxury I assume others feel scrolling through pictures of influencers lounging poolside and shiny, cocktail in hand, sky cloudless and serene above them. Also, as someone whose thirties have somehow wound up considerably more extroverted than my shut-in twenties, I have to say, having recently befriended some representatives of the species, party people do tend toward certain admirable and appealing qualities! They’re so nice! I had no idea!
[7]

Wednesday, February 12th, 2025

Sexyy Red & Bruno Mars – Fat Juicy & Wet

“FJWP” doesn’t have the same ring…

Sexyy Red & Bruno Mars - Fat Juicy & Wet
[Video]
[4.78]

Katherine St. Asaph: QUIZ: What does this track have the exact same energy as?
A) Ty Dolla $ign ft. Charli XCX & Tinashe – “Drop That Kitty”
B) King PU$$Y Eater – “Goop on Ya Grinch”
C) The TMZ headline “Mark Zuckerberg — Sexy & SHIRTLESS!”
B) The sexual banter of “Nutsacksandwich,” “Impalaexpert,” and “Moniqueisamazing” in this New York Magazine piece on the metaverse
E) The boob joke montage from Austin Powers in Goldmember (as opposed to the dick joke montage from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, a critical distinction)
F) All of the above
[3]

Julian Axelrod: Against all odds I’m still rooting for Sexyy Red’s breakout success, even if she has to remake “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion swapped out for a Madame Tussaud wax figure of a ’70s pimp. I like to imagine Bruno Mars approached every woman in rap and said, “I’ll give you a ’90s R&B lowrider beat AND a horny simp hook IF you let me look taller than you in the video,” and only Sexyy and Cardi said yes. I truly cannot imagine anyone having sex to this song.
[7]

Leah Isobel: Who is this for?
[4]

Alfred Soto: I’m on record liking this quasi-MAGA artist, but “Fat Juicy & Wet” runs out of imagination after 45 seconds. She wants Bruno Mars’ crossover prowess, he wants — what, to prove he can get away with saying the p-word?
[6]

Harlan Talib Ockey: “Pussy so good, made me throw up a set” is not something Bruno Mars should be saying. Song is otherwise good.
[7]

Claire Davidson: After “Uptown Funk,” so much of Bruno Mars’s persona has been defined by how well he straddles the line between “suave” and “cornball”—the latter of which feels somewhat inevitable, given his status as a 5’5” balladeer who has a penchant for saying shit like this in the public eye. The moment I saw the title “Fat Juicy & Wet,” with its on-the-nose suggestiveness, I was convinced Mars was pranking his audience by making a song as overtly ridiculous as possible, a heel-turn from the well-made but deeply conventional collaborations that have defined his past year. Indeed, this song is terrible. Bruno Mars is at his best when playing in the broadest possible strokes that allow his charisma to do the talking; when playing hype man to Sexyy Red, with very blunt descriptions of her sexual prowess, his attempts to project a sense of cool land with a resounding thud. That he has no chemistry with Sexyy Red isn’t surprising, either—after all, she’s 26, whereas he’s pushing 40—but she doesn’t help matters, her flow too loose to achieve the buoyancy this rubbery, obviously dated beat requires. If anything, her verses could stand to be a bit more outlandish, given how anxious this song is to lean into hyperbolic raunchiness; when the most creative punchline relies on milk mustache imagery, I’m left feeling like everyone here is grasping at straws. The fact that this song comes from the same man who made the “Finesse” remix is almost baffling, but the upside of that comparison is its assurance that “Fat Juicy & Wet” won’t have any staying power once its novelty fades. 
[3]

Ian Mathers: A friend described Eggers’ Nosferatu as “deeply horny but not at all sexy,” which turns out to be a much better strategy for a gothic horror movie than a song titled “Fat Juicy & Wet.”
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: Why does this sound like a B-side that 03 Greedo gave to Jeremy Reaves in a session to gussy up?
[4]

Taylor Alatorre: Irrespective of ByteDance’s decision, forced TikTok memes will continue to exist in some form, and given that reality we should hope that more of them are like this: a non-malicious peddler of truth in advertising, insistent not on monopolizing your attention but merely borrowing it for a sec, asking for your kind consideration as a pair of cartoonishly inflated cheeks are shoved up against your nostrils. “Bubble Butt” wasn’t a bridge too far, Mars now realizes with the wisdom of age — it didn’t go far enough. That said, forced meme is still forced, and metatextual sexiness is about as sexy as its pronunciation.
[5]

Wednesday, February 12th, 2025

Bad Bunny – DtMF

Benito encourages us, “do take more photos”…

Bad Bunny - DtMF
[Video]
[8.00]

Al Varela: Narratively, having “DtMF” be the last TikTok hit before it shut down would have been very fitting. A song about processing the fact that a major relationship in your life has ended, and all the regrets that flood in when you realize you didn’t cherish it as much as you should have. I think this is a feeling that’s especially resonant in the decade of COVID and social isolation where no matter how hard we try, things won’t be the same as they used to be. Having this song’s chorus be delivered through a big crowd chant makes it resonate as a communal experience. As lonely as the song is, it’s also a reminder that you’re not alone, and it’s not too late to start taking pictures. I should follow the song’s advice, honestly.
[9]

Alfred Soto: As pervasive in Miami-Dade as standing water and bleeding-ear Trump flags, Bad Bunny is beloved because he incarnates what we Hispanics love best about our polyglot culture: the scamp and the storyteller in easeful co-existence. With voice suffused with echo as an attempt to counteract the Morse code beeps, he defends his penchant for taking photos over his girlfriend’s objections. He comes across as the kind of guy who after a confrontation will pull you close to dance in plays, which can suck too.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: According to Frances Aparicio, the plena is a mixture of Europena and African musical elements practiced by the African and mulatto peoples of then colony Puerto Rico, especially in southern and southeastern Puerto Rico where the sugar growing plantations were located, holding the African slaves brought to the island to plant then harvest the sugar crop for the Spanish, then Americans. A common story often shared by scholars says the genre took its name from two immigrants from St Kitts, a husband (John Clark) and wife (Catherine George aka Dona Catin) who made their living playing music, so when the husband would demand his fife to “play, Anna!” or “play now!”, which the Spanish would rewrite as plena. Joselino Oppenheimer aka Bumbun, who would plow the land on the plantation, singing and improvising plenas, taking the solos while his cuarteros would sing back refrains, is hailed by music scholar Juan Flores and by other plena fans and musicians as King of La Plena. Eventually, he left this job to create the first plena band, where he was well regarded as a panderetoro, famous for his virtuoso skills with the pandereta and high ability to improvise, as well as a common performance trick where he would hang it on his shoulder, bounce it off his head or rolling it on the floor. It does remind me of Benito, a oddball and spritelike figure whose charming, lively and genderbending affect recalls this proud, ebullient charisma despite it probably not directly being pulled from Bumbun’s example. “DtMF,” however, is a well trodden plena infused pop which sadly recalls the gently wilted relationship with a woman who he has lost, and ends directly pulling from that old practice as an unknown group of cuarteros gleefully sing the hook playing it back to us. At the end, one even improvises a line of his own, sparking laughter from probably not only his compatriots, but Benito himself. Bumbun would be proud.
[10]

Julian Axelrod: It’s literally so hack and embarrassing to be like “wow this pop artist is using live instrumentation” but wow! Bad Bunny sounds really good with live instruments!
[8]

Iain Mew: I love all the different bends and sways given to the beeps that keep popping up. Set against the live drums and crowd vocals, the effect is simultaneously nostalgic and urgent, a photo of a moment that hasn’t faded.
[7]

Katherine St. Asaph: The best song that extols taking nudes while sounding like the Secret of Mana town theme.
[7]

Melody Esme: A likable bit of reggaeton that moves between contemplative folk and anthemic dance music, complete with a group chant. I dig the Amber Alert siren, and the tom-heavy beat reminds of Ice Spice’s “Think U the Shit,” of all things. But the words, about nostalgia and how the superficial things in life all seem arbitrary when time passes and all you’re left with memories, are the true highlight.
[7]

Will Adams: “I should have taken more photos” is a fascinating spin on the well-worn sentiment of not knowing how good you have it ’til it’s gone. Maybe we millennials with our selfies and our Instagram hashtags and our phones everywhere were simply using the tools we had to achieve the same goal: preserve happiness while we still have it. “DtMF” captures that feeling: a bustling groove, house-party shout-along backing vocals, and the weightiness of knowing that all this won’t last forever.
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: An amendment to my prior statement on nostalgia: while appealing to the nostalgic impulse of the listening public at large is still a a hellish affliction, art about the experience of nostalgia has a very high chance of making me cry. If “DtMF” was just a sad banger that would be enough; instead, it’s a sad banger par excellence. Bad Bunny uses the steely arena-sized synths and reggaeton rhythms that he always tends towards, but here they feel alive in a way that his music — anyone’s music — only rarely does. By the time the song erupts into an island-sized gang vocal in its final minute, more and more voices filling the mix until you can barely make out his lead performance, I’m enveloped in the weight of its feeling.
[9]